


He Didn't Know

by CorruptedAster



Category: Dream SMP- fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Major Character Injury, Panic Attacks, Philza apologist just doing Philza apologist things, Retelling of Nov 16th, SBI Family Dynamic Minus Techno, This is just 3k of pain and I'm not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28756677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorruptedAster/pseuds/CorruptedAster
Summary: It had been one month of radio silence as he waited to hear about his son's victory. One month since they asked Technoblade, not their father, for help. One month of baited breath. One month of agonized waiting, punctuated by a distraught, pleading call from his youngest son. One month before Phil couldn't wait anymore.He would be there for them this time. He would protect his boys.A retelling of the events of November 16th from Philza's very uninformed perspective.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	He Didn't Know

**Author's Note:**

> This entire thing is just me indulging both my Philza apologist and need for angst. I hope ya'll enjoy it.

_ He didn’t know.  _

When Phil joined the SMP, he’d come at the behest of a distraught son. 

Tommy, his youngest, had called him in the middle of the night speaking far too quickly for Phil to really gleam anything coherent. Tommy’s voice was filled to the brim with desperation and fear when he wasn’t hyperventilating. From what Phil could understand, the words “revolution”, “TNT” and “last life” sent chills through his spine. 

It had only been a month since his old war buddy Technoblade went to assist his two boys in their revolution. A fact which stuck a dagger through Phil’s heart the more he thought about it. So he tried not to think about it. Didn’t think about Wilbur’s reluctance to ask his own father for help. 

It had been one long month of radio silence as he waited to hear about their victory. He waited for the cheers as his boys recounted their battles, just as they had done after the war for independence before.

In the past, Wilbur would be the one calling Phil in the middle of the night. The calls were filled with soft confessions of doubt, claims of inadequacy, and insecurity for the future of the small country he put his whole heart into building alongside his little brother. Phil wanted nothing more than to join his boys on the server, help them in any way he could. But everytime Phil opened the idea to Wilbur, a sharp “No” had cut through their conversation and created unsettling silence. Phil could see that Wilbur wanted to be seen as strong, to his people, to his brother, and to his father. Phil believed in his son. 

So he let it be. 

_ He didn’t know.  _

Phil took the time to calm Tommy, asking him to explain what was happening in a way he could understand. It took multiple leading questions and quite a lot of patience, but eventually Philza learned about the state of the revolution. 

After fearing complete abandonment by the people of Manburg, the little resistance held up in Pogtopia, only days before the final battle, had found itself with quite an influx of people. It seemed everyone truly believed in the revolution, praising it in secret while walking the roads of L’Manbur, and wanted to fight to reclaim it from the tyrannical president that sat in office. Tommy had been happy to accept everyone in the fold, ecstatic even. They finally had the number to take down Schlatt. But when he admitted this to Wilbur it drove a deep wedge between them. Wilbur couldn’t find it in himself to trust anyone but Tommy, and wanted nothing to do with any of the “L’Manburg traitors.”

When Phil asked about why Techno wasn’t included he learned about the Festival. A sick feeling entered his stomach. _ You should have gone with Techno.  _ His mind whispered to him. Maybe if he had, his son’s best friend wouldn’t have lost a life to a man Phil had trusted to keep them all safe.

Now allowing himself to wallow in the helpless feelings building in his chest, Phil pressed Tommy about the TNT he mentioned. Tommy explained Wilbur’s plan. Wilburs “stupid, idicotic, bullshit plan”. The plan to blow everything they worked for away into the breeze. To take away everything everyone had built because if  _ Wilbur  _ couldn’t have it, why should anyone else? 

Tommy parroted Wilbur’s words to Phil. “Let’s be the bad guys.” Phil's stomach twisted in a nauseating way as Tommy admitted the words kept awake at night. Wilbur, the boy he raised to respect the work of others, to see the effort it takes to build even the simplest structures, wanted to go against everything Phil had ever taught him. Another’s build is their own work of art, their own will manifested into a structure sacred to them. Destroying what not only you but countless others built together… how could Wilbur even come up with such an idea. 

In stunned silence, Phil listens to Tommy go on about the bombs under the city.  _ 11 and half stacks of TNT _ . He listens as Tommy breaks down all over again. How Tommy finally confesses his greatest fear for the next day. 

Dying by his brother’s actions. 

_ He didn’t know. _

The admission snaps Phil out of his daze, pushing his state into one of confusion. That couldn’t be right. Tommy and Wilbur had left their cottage home in the forest with 3 brightly glowing hearts on their wrist. Swallowing bile creeping up his throat Phil asked, “Tommy how many lives do you have left?”

Silence falls between them. 

It’s broken by Tommy’s dismayed voice asking his own question, “Wilbur didn’t tell you?” Another pause and Phil prays to Prime that this is some kind of joke. The young bright eyed boy that left his home only a short year ago. 3 hearts strong. How could Tommy have lost 2 in such a short span of time. 

_ He didn’t know. _

His heart breaks when Tommy tells him about the final control room. How someone they trusted ripped his first life from not only him, but everyone else in the room, including Wilbur and Tubbo.  _ Tubbo and Tommy are on their last lives.  _ Phil queily let the realization settle into his bones.  _ Tommy and Tubbo are on their last lives and I can’t protect them.  _

_ He didn’t know. _

His heart shatters when Tommy tells him how payed for L’Manburg’s freedom with his second life. Tommy’s crying again, and Phil caught himself crying as well. Silent tears falling down his face as he listens to his son’s crestfallen accounts of sleepless nights tracing the single heart left on his left wrist. Wilbur had never mentioned it. Tommy had never mentioned it.

_ He didn’t know. _

Carefully, Philza picked up the pieces of his heart. Glued them together with a promise to Tommy. He would take part in the revolution the next day and stop Wilbur from doing something he would regret. A soft thank you is all Phil hears before the line cuts off. 

The message he sent to Dream might have sounded desperate, but he couldn’t remember in the fog that was war planning. The only thing that mattered was the sound of a response coming through his communicator. The words “Server will be open for you tomorrow,” lit up the screen. Phil didn’t know he was holding his breath before it came out on its own. The alleviation that came with that message was only a small reprieve from the chaos he would soon be facing. 

_ He didn’t know. _

Phil had a plan. Find Wilbur. Not the most complex plan but it was something. As long as he could find his boy, as long as he was close to him, he could stop Wilbur destroying everything. 

Tommy of course would still be in danger, but Phil couldn’t be in two places at once. He mulled over that thought for an hour before settling on the best course of action. He carefully typed out a message of Technoblade. In it he asked for Techno to keep an eye on Wilbur until he could get there and to promise to watch Tommy’s back when the fighting began, to protect his youngest son during the chaos of war.Phil never checked to see if Technoblade responded. Confident that his friend would do as he asked even without the message. 

Technoblade never wrote back. 

_ He didn’t know. _

Having only been asleep for an hour or two before Tommy called him, Phil was running on empty for most of his planning session. After 5 hours, Phil’s body gives out on him. A restless sleep befell him, filled with flashes of wars past, friends lost. 

When he awoke, it was only a few hours after sunrise. He should’ve been able to access the server then. Opening his communicator he tried to change servers, inputting the IP address Techno had left behind on a strip of paper before leaving himself.

“Not Whitelisted: Contact Server Owner”

Phil’s body ran cold. A few more times he tried to input the address, only to get the same error message. Deeming that method useless for the time, he instead opened his messages with Dream. Quickly he typed out messages requesting entrance. 

A single message came back to him an hour later, “Patience is a virtue.”

The screen of the communicator broke from the force Phil applied to it. Taking a deep breath he tried a few other people he knew with access to the server. Not one of them responded to him.  _ You're too late, it's already started.  _ His thoughts unhelpfully supplied.

So he waited. Sick to his stomach. Fidgeting in his too comfortable living room. An hour passes. Then two. He forced himself to stop looking at the time. 

The notification sound startled him when it happened. He pulled out the communicator, almost dropping it in his haste. The message was from Dream, “Welcome to the server :)” with the IP address attached. 

Preemptively he messaged Wilbur, hoping the other would see it by the time Phil entered the server. Hoped it would save him time in finding his son. “Where are you?”

Surprisingly, Wilbur’s response came immediately. “In L’Manburg, with the others.”

Now having all he needed, Phil opened his server listings and punched in the number’s he’s already committed to memory. Phil was expecting to spawn somewhere in a forest with crudely built walls around, having talked to Techno about his own entrance a while back. He even had his request to get picked up at spawn ready to send to Tommy and Techno, but he didn’t need it. 

The place he spawned in was low light, torches lighting up a room past the hallway he was in. His heart stopped when he laid his eyes on a figure crouching over a button. 

“Yeah, in L’Manburg.” The words come out before Phil can process them. He’s not too late is he? Wilbur hadn’t done anything yet. Was the fighting still happening? Faint cries could be heard from somewhere above them, dulled by the stone around them. Was Wilbur here because they were losing? 

_ He didn’t know. _

Wilbur looked around the small room, walls covered in illegible words it seemed only he could read. “This is L’Manburg,” he replied with a soft, bitter smile. Phil stepped into the room, forcing himself to stay composed. He could still stop him. 

“Do you know what this button is?” Wilbur asked him, ghosting a hand over it. 

Phil flinched at the action, wanting nothing more then to rip his son’s hand away from the thing that could be his undoing. But he knew if he tried Wilbur might lunge for it in desperation. So instead, Phil played along, “Yeah, I do.” 

“Have you heard the song, the song on the walls, before?” Wilbur asked innocently. He took a few steps away from the button to show Phil the scribbles. Not even awaiting an answer he went on, “I was just saying there  _ was  _ a special place,” Wilbur’s hands brushed over the words, “But it’s not there anymore… it's not.”

“It is there,” Phil cut in, “You’re winning it back, Wil.”

Pure agony enraptured Wilbur’s face as he let out a frustrated scream and cried out, “Phil I’m always so close to pushing this button. I’ve been here so many times,” his voice cracks from pain flowing through it. Wilbur fell to his knees, only an arms length from the button. “Like 7 or 8 times, I’ve been here.”

“And you want to just blow it all up?” Phil took careful steps towards Wilbur, closely watching for any erratic motions. 

With a broken smile Wilbur stares at his hands, “Yeah. I do. I think I do.” The hopeless conviction in his voice stuns Phil, who stops his own movement. 

“But you worked so hard to build this. Everyone did. You and them, you fought so hard to gain everything back. If you push that button, everyone hard work, the effort, the love they put into building this place just disappears,” Phil tried to appeal to his son’s morality. 

Wilbur’s gaze shifted from the ground to the button. Phil was trapped in place by the emotions in his son’s eyes. Curiosity, hatred, confusion, desperation, anguish. Softly, Wilbur whispered, “I don’t even know if it works anymore… I could press it. And nothing could....”

Shaking off the dread his feels building, Phil forces his frozen legs to step forward again. “Do you really want to take that chance? There is a lot of TNT potentially connected to that button. Your brother, your friends, they’re all outside, under that TNT.”

“Phil,” Wilbur slowly stood from his place on the ground. Leaning heavily on the wall he looked his father in the eye, “There was a saying Phil,” a choked laugh escaped Wilbur’s throat, “By a traitor, once part of L’Manburg. He had a saying Phil.  _ It was never meant to be _ .” The second Wilbur uttered those words Phil’s mind flashed back to the phone call the night before, Tommy’s broken voice uttering the same words while recounting his first death. The pit in Phil’s stomach threatened to engulf him and he almost missed the way Wilbur’s closed fist slammed on the button. 

_ He didn’t know.  _

“Oh my god,” Phil only had a moment to react before he heard the sounds of explosions around them. Acting on instinct he dived forward to embrace his son, wrapping his ash grey wings around the both of them to shield them from the blasts. Fire surged around them and Phil had to bite his lip, as not to scream out in anguish as it seared his wings. 

Eventually the explosions stopped and the ringing in their ears became somewhat bearable. He released Wilbur, instead turning to look behind him where the hallway had given way to a gaping crater where the once great city of L’Manburg had stood. “You didn’t…” Phil’s denial came out breathless. Sluggishly he stood up and walked to the newly created cliff edge. “It’s all gone,” he uttered in disbelief. 

Wilbur let out a loud cackle, startling his father. “My L’manburg Phil!” he shouted, “My unfinished Symphony! Forever unfinished.” Phil looked back in horror to see his son holding a sword, a familiar sword, one Phil remembered enchanting for Techno before he left. In the next moment, a clang sounded out from where the sword landed at his feet. “Kill me Phil,” Wilbur demanded with the same conviction as before. Like this was all part of some elaborate plan. Dream’s visage briefly flitted through Phil’s mind, the way he was forced to wait. 

The world began to swim as Phil gently lifted the sword. Wilbur continued on, demanding Phil end his life. Pointing to the people scattered about the crater watching them. Claiming they wanted nothing more than to see Wilbur dead. The words wormed their way into Phil’s mind despite the sound of blood rushing in his ears and his fist clenched around the sword. “You’re my son!” Phil shouted in distress, in a softer tone he continued, “No matter what you do, I can’t…”

Wilbur stepped forward, forcing Phil to take a step back. A couple more steps and they were at the cliff edge.

“Phil this isn’t- Look! Look how much work went into this! And it’s gone! I destroyed everything everyone worked for.” Wilbur’s tone was bordering hysterical, but Phil could hear him pleading.

Phil did look. Looked out at the faces that had crowded together. He saw the crater slowly filling with water from sewers that now lead to nowhere. He saw the bodies of pets lying and drifting along. He saw the anger and hate directed at his son. He saw Tommy looking at him with a hurt that Phil had only begun to understand the night before. He saw the damage his inaction had created. He needed to do something. Anything to fix it. 

“Do it.”

_ He didn’t know. _

So Phil turned, heart already splitting apart, eyes cold as he gripped the sword in two hands and lurched forward. The sleek metal slid through Wilbur’s torso more easily than he had expected. Faintly in the back of his mind he could hear the gasps and shocked scream’s of the onlookers, but they didn’t matter. 

_ He didn’t know. _

Because as Wilbur raised his arms to grip the handle and push the sword deeper still, Phil saw his wrist. Just like Tommy Wilbur had left their bright happy life in a cottage with three strong hearts on his wrist. But in that moment, Phil had to watch the last remaining one flash faintly before fading away. 

_ He didn’t know. _

His mind went back to his conversation with Tommy. They had lost their first lives together. But Tommy had lost his second alone So why was there not another heart left? 

_ He didn’t know.  _

Wilbur’s rapidly cooling body fell forward into Phil’s arms. He couldn’t hold them both up in the shocked state he was in and they fell to their knees. Shaking, Phil cradled his son’s body in his arms. 

_ He didn’t know. _

Brown eyes were steady, but unfocused as they stared up at blue. A genuine smile creeped onto his son’s face as the light slowly faded in his eyes. When he spoke, Phil could hear the strain and energy flowing out of him as Wilbur tried to warn Phil, “You know. Dream said there wasn’t a traitor... But you know... He lied…. Technoblade has 2 withers.”

_**He doesn’t know.** _

Phil doesn’t know what to do. His body is screaming at him to stop, to fight, to rest, to find something to help with Wilbur’s wounds, to stay here with his dying son, but behind himself he can now hear the chaos that comes with Wilbur’s reveal. Forcing himself to turn around he sees it, Technoblade standing before Tommy, his remaining son, atop a small mountain of soul sand, holding a wither skull. 

“THEN DIE LIKE ONE!” is all Phil hears before his body springs into action. He rips the sword from Wilbur’s body and attempts to fly between the spawning monstrosities and the stunned form of his son. 

But the second he tries to spread his wings while leaping off the cliff edge all he can do is let out a howl of pain. The explosions had damaged his wings too much to function and now he’s plummeting out of the sky, towards the ground as some people look on horrified. 

Nothing catches him as he hits the ground full force. The fall stuns him for a moment and he wonders if he’ll fall unconscious. But the wither’s screeching brings him back to reality. And as much as he tries, he can’t get his battered body to move. Red leaks into his vision from a head injury as he attempts to find his son in the carnage around him. 

A shadow falls over Phil and he can’t quite make out who it is. Even if he could, it's not like he can do much as they gently lift him and carry him away from the battle. He tries to protest, to get them to understand that his son is still behind them. That his son needs protecting. But whoever it is, either ignores him or doesn’t seem to care for his weak protests. 

The journey is brief, or at least he thinks it is. His sense of time may not be working in his favor at the moment. The scenery is blurred both by blood and pounding pain his eyes are in, but Phil is able to make out the white and purple building he’s been brought inside. He’s set down on what feels like an uncomfortable wooden bench.

Phil can faintly feel the person wrapping some of the surface burns. “They won’t hurt you here. You’ll be safe. Someone will come to help you when this is all over,” the person speaks for the first time. Phil’s brain, even on the edge of unconsciousness and scrambled as it is will always recognize the owner of that voice. 

The blood is wiped from his eyes and pink hair comes slightly into focus. Weakly Phil reaches for and grips the other’s wrist. With the last of his energy he croaks out a single word, ”Why?” Darkness encroaches on Phil’s vision as the other stands up and gently pulls Phil’s hand off of him. 

The last thing Phil hears before losing consciousness is a guilty confession, “I’m sorry I couldn’t promise to protect them.”


End file.
